'He had a fine ring on the fourth finger of his left hand; it flashed as he gave us each a few cigars, and lit a fresh one for himself. He had a noble gold watch (all these infidels have such), and he looked at it from time to time, as he hummed a song, and after telling us to "pull like devils, as we should be well paid," fell fast asleep, for he feared nothing.
'Abdul and I continued to pull, but less vigorously than before. We looked slyly at each other, and thought of the watch and the ring. The sea was very quiet and smooth; there was not a ripple on it, and no eye beheld us, but the winking stars. The infidel-dog slept soundly, and he was smiling in his sleep, as he dreamt perhaps of his two Ingleez wives, or his island of mud and fog, for we could see his white teeth shining under his dark moustache in the starlight. We were some miles off Cape Karaburun, for we could see its lighthouse glimmering on our lee. Everything was quiet and lonely as it may well be upon the midnight ocean. We exchanged another glance, and in a moment more, the throat of the infidel was gaping with a red slash of my handjiar, which nearly cut his head off!
'Abdul Rasig made a snatch at the gold watch, and just as we tossed him overboard, I tore off the diamond ring with my teeth, and, Allah Kebir! a mouthful of his unclean flesh came off with it; but here it is—the ring, not the flesh!'
In the excitement of his narrative the wretch forgot himself so much as to exhibit the ring. It was a chaste little jewel—a pure diamond, set round with pearls; and on beholding it, I started back as if a thunderbolt had burst at my ear.
That identical ring I had seen a hundred times on the finger of Laura Everingham; and I had last observed it, to my pique and grief, on the hand of her lover—her husband Clavering—when he dined at our mess in the Castle of Dumbarton!
Astonishment and horror chained all my faculties, and meanwhile the exulting Zahroun continued his revolting narrative.
'We flung him over, and he sunk like a stone; then we put the helm up, and bore away for the river Ustuola, our point of rendezvous on the coast of Natolia—a lonely place, where all our armed caiques were to meet for attacking and taking the yacht. But a storm came on; wallah! a storm of wind and lightning, a flash of which shaved my left whisker clean off, as you may see; we were driven up the Sea of Marmora, and after losing both sweeps and sail, were drifting at the mercy of the wind and tide, when an armed boat of the Bostandgi Bashi—may dogs defile his beard!—overhauled us, just when we were quarrelling and mauling each other about the respective merits of the watch and ring, for Abdul Rasig was wrathful at the splendour of my diamond, vowing, that for every para the watch was worth I had got a piastre, and a para being worth only the thirtieth part of a piastre, four of which now go to make a shilling Ingleez, we loudly accused each other of murder and robbery, like the fathers of fools.
'The Kadi before whom we were brought carefully wound up the watch, applied it to his ear, and as it ticked to his satisfaction, he solved the matter by depositing it in his judicial pocket. He would also have quieted me, by slipping my ring on his finger, but I placed it in my mouth, and swore, by every hair in the boards of the two hundred and twenty-seven thousand prophets of Islam, that I had swallowed it; then we were marched off to the Bagnio, and so are here.'
'Ay, here we are, a thousand burning curses on your folly!' growled Abdul; 'for the four caiques will leave the mouth of the Ustuola on the fourth night from this; the yacht will be boarded and taken, and neither of us will be there to share the plunder or the pleasure; and wallah! I had set my whole soul on having one of those white-skinned Ingleez women!'